Hit man, 15, convicted of killing

A teenage hitman has been found guilty of murdering Gulistan Subasi for 200 pounds when he was just 15-years-old (Metropolitan Police/PA)

A teenager believed to be Britain's youngest hit man is facing a life sentence for shooting dead a young mother in a contract killing.

Santre Sanchez Gayle was aged just 15 when he was paid £200 to murder 26-year-old Gulistan Subasi.

The young hitman was recruited to carry out the execution because he had no apparent connections with the Turkish community but was a petty criminal whose other interests included girls, football, playing on his X-Box and using Facebook.

On the night of the murder in March last year he was driven to the the flat in Hackney, east London, where Miss Subasi was staying, and knocked on the front door.

CCTV showed the teenager, with a hoodie pulled over his head, resting a sawn-off shotgun on a front gate and pulling the trigger after the door was answered.

The murder took place at the home of the victim's mother, Dondu Subasi, who found her daughter lying with a tennis-ball sized hole in her chest. Mrs Subasi later tearfully told the Old Bailey how Gulistan had been preparing to celebrate her son's ninth birthday the next day.

The young hitman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was caught after boasting of the hit to another youth.

He was apparently unfazed after being arrested and charged with her murder, telling a fellow prisoner in a note that "the evidence they have on me is circumstantial, nothing forensic". While some of it could prove "sticky", he added: "My barrister should be able to rip it open."

Gayle, from Kensal Rise, north London, was convicted of murder by an Old Bailey jury, along with Izak Billy, 22, of Willesden, north London. Billy was said to have hired the youth after acting as an intermediary for the people who took out the contract.

The prosecution alleged the contract had been taken out by Ms Subasi's former partner Serdar Ozbek. But Ozbek, 28, of Wood Green, north London, was found not guilty of murder, after the jury was told he was in Turkey when the shooting took place.